Charles Kutz-Marks preaching

Joint Heirs
Pentecost 2, b, June 18, 2006
Rom. 8:12-17; John 3:16ff
Fathers Day

      According to our best scientific estimates, we human beings have been around for at least 160,000 years.  The human bones found in northeast Africa not long ago... are that old.  Our pre-human antecedents have been around for millions of years before that.  And one senses that we've learned a few things over that time.  My bet is that much of what we pass along generation to generation comes to us through the teaching of our fathers.  On Father's Day especially... but everyday, too... we ought to pause and give thanks for the gifts we receive through our fathers' care.
      What is the wisdom that your father imparted?  My own Dad isn't philosophical by nature.  He didn't expound on profound themes, but he did teach some important lessons:
      "Put your tools away, or at least put MY tools away back in their places on the workbench, after you are done using them."
      "If you put your mind to it, you can figure out how things work."
      "Work hard at what you do.  Work is important.  I don't care if your job is emptying other people's garbage cans.  Do your job well.  And when you are choosing a job: more important than status or money, you need to love your work."
      And finally, "Education is so important.  The life of the mind matters greatly."
      Can you think of some of the things that were said by your father, or the grandfather, or uncle or whatever man was that central male figure in your growing up?  Today would be a good day to do exactly that.  As Ephesians 6 says:
      6:1  Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"--this is the first commandment with a promise: "so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth."
      Father's day is all about honoring. The idea for creating a day for children to honor their fathers began in Spokane, Washington. A woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the idea for Father's Day while listening to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909.  That just goes to show the kind of creative thinking that can be stirred up by listening to a good sermon!
      . Having been raised by her father, Henry Jackson Smart, after her mother died, Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her. It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was, in the eyes of his daughter, a courageous, selfless, and loving man. Henry Smart was born in June, so she chose to hold the first Father's Day celebration in Spokane, Washington on the 19th of June, 1910.  14 years later, in 1924, the idea had caught on enough, the then President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the third Sunday in June as Father's Day.
            If your father is or was like mine, it was in his living more than his oratory, that I learned what he wanted to convey to me, what he had learned about life. .  Dad was the only surgeon in his hometown, our hometown in north central Florida, and that meant heavy, sometimes inconvenient responsibilities on his shoulders that for decades he gladly bore.
      His behaviour, his actions taught my sisters and me that:
      > Helping someone in need is more important than protecting your own privacy, or getting your own rest, or, sometimes, keeping your own family happy.
      > Sleep isn't really as necessary as most people think it is.
       > Early mornings are meant to be experienced.... not slept through.
      > After dinner TV is meant to be slept through.
      > Pennies are not meant to slip away easily.  Pinch each one, twice, before letting go!  And its corollaries:
      >don't buy new if you can fix it. 
      > Don't buy until you have to. 
      > Most things you could buy aren't worth buying. 
      Some of my best "father memories" are going out in the stillness of the morning with Dad in the shallow aluminum fishing boat that my Aunt Adeline had given him after he performed surgery on her... because he wouldn't accept payments for his medical care from family members
      In those rare escapes from the hospital, that little boat would become a part of the classroom for living that took place at Lake Kerr, where my father, and his father had fished and camped out with their extended family. 
      Every soul should be blessed with a place such as this is for me, that is, in the words of the theologian and cultural anthropologist, an axis mundi, an axis of the world, where earth and heaven somehow meet.  I doubt it is just coincidence that this place for me is a place where my father and his father had found the restful center for their lives, too.
        Paddling the boat just off shore to the rope stretched between two poles in about 8 feet of water.  This was the trotline.  A place of magic!  Individual lines dangled from the rope, most with a treasure in the morning. Sometimes a snapping turtle, sometimes a bass, sometimes, most interestingly, a catfish.  Watch those spines on  the catfish, they'll stick you and the infection that follows hurts bad.  Take the catfish.  Nail the head of it to the old live oak tree, like the family has been doing for decades.  Slit the skin around back of the head and with a pair of pliers peel the skin off.  Dad actually had extra old hemostats discarded from the operating room, that he used for the project.  Going to show there truly is more than one way to skin a cat.  I'll bet it took 30,000 years of evolution just to get that one procedure down.  Then fried catfish!  Delicious!
      Fathers teach us to enjoy the world around us.  At their best, fathers teach us about the world that we'll encounter and encourage us and equip with what we'll need to survive and succeed in that world.  They might even give us a hint of what that success will look like if we get there.
      But the major teaching my father taught me, the one that I am only really understanding after becoming a father myself, was demonstrated in that same precious location.  I remember a warmth that sunny afternoon at the lake.  My sister and I were in a rowboat just off the dock in front of the cottage.  I was probably 9, and she was  7.  The weather had started getting windy.  We have been able to paddle the boat were we wanted it to go, but quite suddenly the wind began to make it more difficult.  We started drifting down the lake, though I was rowing  as hard as I could to get back to the dock.  We were in front of the neighbors' cottage and he watched us going by with a strange expression on his face.  But he did nothing to help us. 
      My sister got the message then.  We were in trouble.  She became hysterical and started screaming at the top of her lungs, "Daddy!!!!"
      .  I was stunned, but still rowing with all I had in me to make it back to the dock.   A few seconds later, our father came racing down the dock with his feet thumping on the wooden boards.  By the time he reached the end of the dock he had already figured out what was going on with us, without hesitation he plunged off the end of the dock into the water towards us.
       I can't tell you how reassuring it was to see him flying in the air towards us, as if he was Superman.  There he was, without a second thought, rescuing us even though he was in waters that we knew and he knew to be infested with the occasional alligator and the much more common cottonmouth moccasin.  All Dad had to see was his children floating away, and without any hesitation whatsoever, he did what he needed to do to provide for us.
      Needless to say, the story had a happy ending.  Once Dad reached the boat he was able to row against the wind and to get it safely back to the dock.  But it was that willingness to do whatever was necessary to resolve the situation safely, at whenever personal risk or pain that might involve.  My father loved us SO MUCH, that no cost was too high to pay for our safe return.
      Do I need to make explicit the connection?  Yes, this is just exactly the action of the good shepherd; the action of God come to earth in human form, to teach the way to live, to show us what is important; to show us that we are so important to God; that even the sacrifice of God's own self was not too high a price to pay, if it would make us whole, and well, and free.
      What did your dad teach you about life... and about God?
      As the Apostle Paul puts in our scripture this morning:
 "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
      Our brother, our joint heir, Jesus wasn't the first or the only teacher of his day to speak of God as "Father."  But as best we know, he was unique in calling God "Abba", "Daddy"... endearingly close... just like my sister screaming in the boat "Daddy!"... just like you and me when we reach the end of our abilities and call out... 
      We can easily see that Jesus was an heir to the power and the spiritual blessing of God.  This letter to the Romans, so are we.  "For God so loved the world..."God's love, perhaps as exemplified in our fathers' love, knows absolutely no bounds. 
      Hallelujah!  Amen!

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